A Summer of Recalls Makes Toy Shopping a Source of Anxiety

With more than 20 million toys manufactured in China recalled for lead paint and other hazards, more parents are looking carefully at what they buy.

ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN

“Get this, Mommy,” said Thalia, 2, on a recent morning at a Target in Brooklyn, as she handed her mother, Liz Gumbinner, a plastic horse made by the Schleich company.

“We have a lot of these; they’re made in Germany,” Ms. Gumbinner said, then checked a white sticker on the hoof and shook her head. “No, it’s made in China. I’ve been misled by the German name.”

With more than 20 million toys manufactured in China recalled for lead paint and other hazards this summer — and some children being hospitalized after swallowing the magnets of recalled toys — a lot more parents are looking carefully at what they buy and where it comes from. But it is not easy to find many exceptions to the rule that most toys come from China.

Ms. Gumbinner pulled a package of Lincoln Logs off a shelf. “If these are made in China, I’ll be upset,” she said. “No, China. I was holding out hope that something called ‘Lincoln’ would be American.”

As the holiday season nears, parents are waiting for Barbie’s other plastic shoe to drop. When a Mattel toy is recalled for having lead paint, should they avoid just that toy, or all Mattel toys, or all painted toys from China, or all toys from China? Or, since Mattel admitted recently that the problem with loose magnets is not in the manufacturing process but with Mattel’s domestic design, is anxiety toward China misdirected?

“Nobody wants to be a paranoid parent,” said Ms. Gumbinner, 39, of Brooklyn Heights, who works as a creative director for a Los Angeles advertising agency and is a co-founder of the site coolmompicks.com. “I mean, where do you draw the line between cautionary and crazy?”

Other than purging the toy chest of all recalled products, many parents are at a loss. The steady drumbeat of recalls over the last three months has led some parents to wonder whether it is just a matter of time before more of their children’s playthings will be found hazardous.

In the absence of hard and fast rules, the range of reactions has been mixed. Some parents are shrugging off the potential danger as remote or unavoidable. Others are going out of their way to avoid anything even faintly suspicious.

Among the signs that concerns are escalating: pediatricians and health centers report that more parents are bringing their children in for lead tests, which doctors say are never a bad idea.

From June, when the first Thomas the Tank Engine lead-paint recall was issued, through August, the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, for example, conducted 3,046 lead tests, an increase of 81 percent from the 1,684 in the period last year.

And some parents are trying to test their children’s toys themselves. Sales of a First Alert home lead test are up 900 percent over last year, according to the company. On Thursday, the product was the 17th best seller in the broad Home Improvement category on Amazon.com, although some product safety experts say that home tests are unreliable.

In an effort to offer some guideposts for parents, retailers like F.A.O. Schwarz are highlighting countries of origin of their merchandise. EBay, where used toys that have been recalled occasionally pop up for sale, recently began directing bidders to toy company recall lists.

Some people are thinking twice before buying used toys. “My girlfriends and I are concerned about going to garage sales, and people are actually staying away,” said Beth Blecherman, who lives in Menlo Park, Calif., and helps run a blog called Silicon Valley Moms. “You hope that toys in stores have been vetted, but how do you know if something you get at a garage sale has been recalled? This has really ruined the whole secondary market for toys.”

Even in the market for new toys, shoppers are puzzled. Is a toy that is assembled in China from parts manufactured elsewhere any safer than one made entirely in China? Does a “made in Indonesia” label inspire any greater confidence?

“I think people are kind of stunned because they don’t know what to do,” said Greg Allen, who writes a blog for fathers, daddytypes.com, and has a 3-year-old daughter. “You can’t just cut out every made-in-China toy. It’s just not realistic.”

On a recent visit to the Toys “R” Us in Times Square, Mr. Allen paused at a section of Playmobil toys, which he said are popular at his house. He trusts the brand because the toys are made in Europe and known for high quality, but he said that the recent spate of recalls has made him question even those assumptions.

“The Thomas the Tank Engine recalls were shocking,” he said. “Then when the Fisher-Price recalls hit, that’s when the problem of the lack of regulations started to become clear.”

As for what all this portends for holiday toy shopping, retailers are unclear, and many parents are trying to figure out how to proceed.

“I don’t think the industry is going to see a big nose dive in terms of dollars,” said Lane Nemeth, who founded Discovery Toys in 1978 and sold the company to Avon a decade ago. “You’re still going to want gifts under the tree at Christmas. There’s just going to be a shift in what people buy.”

Ms. Nemeth said that if she had a toddler, “I’d avoid anything that is painted — I’d just wait until the industry shakes itself out.” Besides, she said, “by bringing home wooden blocks that are unpainted, you’re probably helping your child’s creativity.”

But plain wooden blocks alone probably will not satisfy most toddlers. Danielle Wiley, a 33-year-old publicist in Chicago, recalls a recent tantrum that her 2-year-old son, Max, had in the bathtub.

“I knew a new toy would help,” Ms. Wiley said, but the only one in the house was a Fisher-Price Diego toy that had just been recalled for lead paint. Nevertheless, “I handed him the toy and he stopped,” she said. After the bath, she said, she discarded the toy.

Back in the toy aisle at Target in Brooklyn, Ms. Gumbinner was examining a toy car made by Mattel from the Pixar movie “Cars,” when another shopper, Dunia Sunnreich, a stranger to her, offered some unsolicited advice.

“I don’t think that one’s in the recall, but another one in the series, Sarge, is,” said Ms. Sunnreich, who was shopping for her 3-year-old son, Simon. “I’m glad I can get online on my phone — otherwise I’d have to carry around an extra little bag just for the recall lists. It’s total madness.”

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